Guantanamo Bay detainees win challenge

Many of the 375 detainees have been held at Guantanamo for five years

By staff and agencies

3:48PM BST 29 Jun 2007

In a U-turn, the US Supreme Court has agreed to consider the demands of several "war on terror" suspects held without charge at the Guantanamo Bay prison to have their detentions reviewed by a US federal court.

The decision is a reversal for the court, which had refused to hear the case in April after an appeals court ruled the inmates had no constitutional right to challenge their detentions because they were not US citizens on US soil. A hearing is now likely to begin later this year.

The move is a serious setback for the Bush administration, which had argued that the courts do not have jurisdiction to hear detainee cases. While the Supreme Court did not give a reason for its reversal, the decisions came three weeks after the Bush administration was dealt a blow in its bid to prosecute terror suspects in special military courts.

Last week, lawyers for the detainees filed a statement from a military lawyer in which he described the inadequacy of the process the administration had put forward as an alternative to full-blown review by civilian courts.